The Chinese Government plans to allocate more than 15 billion yuan ($2.38 billion) from the central budget to the country's National Natural Science Foundation, said Chen Yiyu, Director of the foundation, on March 27.

China's central budget has been steadily increasing its support for the foundation over the past few decades. In 1986, its earmark funds were only 80 million yuan ($12.68 million).

Figures show that the foundation granted a total of 18.28 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) to 34,836 projects out of 153,800 applications it received in 2011.

According to Chen, the foundation will increase the average financing amount for main projects that are led by senior scientists and researchers. Meanwhile, more support will be given to local scientific projects and those led by young scientists.